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Sunday, August 19, 2012

Weather Update: Water and Brimstone

At least, here, we’re through with the heatwave. For now.

Phew, what a scorcher!It wasn’t as bad as some parts of the US but we had weeks
of heat - dripping, suffocating,perspiring heat. I have a theory that Britons
are better at tolerating heat than northern Americans.Look how they ruled India in pith helmets and
crinolines and how they head toSpain
and Greece for their summer holidays in temperatures that would send my American
neighbours climbing the walls.

Americans just cannot live without their
air-conditioning and there were tales of people riding round and round on the
New York subway all day, where they could be cool at least. (It wouldn’t work
on the London Tube).

The Friday when it was at its worst and with a
houseful of guests, our freezer seized up. The job-lot of bison burgers we’d just got
from the buffalo ranch was rapidly thawing, with the prospect of eating nothing but bison burgers for the foreseeable
future. If I never see another bison
burger again, it’ll be too soon.

That, however, was
nothing to what happened on Saturday.

The heat had reached
such a pitch that even I was gasping and rolling my eyes. Then the thunderstorm
broke. It was only a thirty-minute thunderstorm but it managed to pack more
into that thirty minutes than the Fourth of July fireworks across the length
and breadth of America all going off at once. We watched from the porch as
three, four, five lightning bolts shot down from the sky simultaneously, followed
by a crash that nearly blew our ears off. Then another. And another. The house
shook, the garden path turned into a lake and the gutters into Niagara Falls. Trees bent
almost double and the rain blew horizontally, drenching us to the skin.

As suddenly as it
had come, the storm was gone, speeding towardstown. Then the power went out.

We get power cuts here,
in this neglected part of the world’s superpower, where electricity still
travels on a Heath Robinson arrangement of flimsy poles and low overhead wires
– and we have got a generator.The catch
was, we couldn’t start it.

“Pray!” I urged hubby, heading to the shops
to get some supplies to supplement the bisonburgers - something we could at least cook
on the barbecue. Town was a scene of devastation. Flashing
police cars surrounded powerless traffic lights, sweating policemen directing the traffic. Roads were closed. Whole trees had come
crashing down. I called hubby and miraculously,
he’d managed to start the generator.So we ended up trying to cook all the rest of the food in the already
defunct freezer on a combination of the microwave and an old gas camp stove, unearthed from the basement, which hubby started up with boy-scoutish glee, while everyone else cowered back in terror.

Such is hardship in
modern America.

Meanwhile, Father Ed at St John's gained some celebrity by preaching, arguably, the shortest, snappiest
sermon ever (certainly the shortest in America). With no power and
even the ceiling fans dead, the church
for the Saturday Vigil Mass was like the Black Hole of Calcutta.“I
expect you’ll all be wanting to get home,” said Father, “So I’ll be quick”. And
he was:

“This morning, when
we got up, it was hot. At lunchtime it was hotter. This afternoon it’s even
hotter. There’s only one place hotter than this. STAY OUT OF IT!”

2 comments:

Dear Alenka,A wonderful Website.We are in awe at your power of description, but not surprising in a master wordsmith! We loved the account of the thunderstorm and your struggle with the generator and your effort to have a lovely English cottage garden.

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About Me

Alenka Lawrence worked for the BBC World Service in London as a talks writer, producer, writer and presenter of radio features and most recently as an editor in BBC News. Her life changed somewhat dramatically when she married an American and came to live in rural Western New York.
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